


a climb

by heterocosmica



Category: Original Work
Genre: Forests, Gen, Hiking, Nature, this is a year of experimenting with my writing i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:08:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25952701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heterocosmica/pseuds/heterocosmica
Summary: you climb a mountain
Kudos: 4





	a climb

_The air tastes like wet dirt_   
_like cut grass_   
_like fresh blackberries_   
_and wet rotting wood._

* * *

1.

You are walking along the narrow ridge, forward, forward, forward, deeper into the dark. You are surrounded by it and yet you are not. You are surrounded by trees and they rise all the way up above you and sink all the way down bellow you, growing from the earth you cannot even imagine, rising to the sky you cannot even conceive of. There's nothing but the trees.   
There's a darkness between the leaves of the trees all around you.

2.

The ground is squishy under your feet. Your steps feel springy, like you're stepping on moss, but the soles of your feet stick to the ground, pulling you back, keeping you in place.  
You push through.

3.

Somewhere above you, a sound of pounding erupts and you stop for a long moment, looking up at the treetops. Once you realise it's just rain, you let out a long breath of relief. None of the drops reach you.  
In the end, you're still wet.

4.

Every few steps, you let yourself look down, along the tree trunks, into the darkness. You never look too long, it is too tempting to feel a draw. It's a long, long, long way down into the deep darkness of the woods but you know, if you stepped into it, you'd want to go deeper.

5.

A smell of cold clings to the darkness around you.

6.

At the first glimpse of the sky, your eyes sting. Leaving the darkness hurts, it tries to pull you back, to tug at your gut, whisper in your ear _don't you want to know? don't you want to sink into the soft, squishy ground and stay here forever? don't you want to be a part of this?_ You keep moving forward anyway.

7.

The trees clear slowly. You don't even notice until you feel the large warm drops of a summer rain on your cold skin. On your tired face. You stop there, closing your eyes and lifting your face to the sky, feeling the rain pour down your body.  
Are you crying or is it just the nature around you? Is there a difference between you and the sky? The ground? the tree tops now withing reach? Are you not nature, too?

8.

You keep going, along the ridge, slowly rising with the earth. The woods are far behind you now, the fields lush with bright green grass surround you, just open plains without borders. A childish need bubbles up inside you and you run, up up up, as your bare skin soaks up the sun rays, into the grass, into the little white, yellow, purple, blue flowers. You breathe in the smell of the grass as you drop yourself down in it, lay on the dry ground, let your eyes slip closed.

9.

Have you slept five minutes? an hour? a day? you do not know but time isn't reality high up in the mountains. There's you and nature, meaning, there's nature, and nothing else exists, you are outside of the world, you are an integral part of it, you are the world. And the world is standing still.

10.

You go on, climbing higher. You're in the clouds now, walking through the cold mist, breathing it in. The air is yours and you are the sky. The layer of water coating your skin slowly freezes on it, you can feel the slight crunch on your skin with every move you make. A slight crunch of your eyelashes with every blink.

11.

Air feels sharp as it fills your lungs and your throat tastes of iron, feeling raw and empty.

12.

On the very top of the world, top of your world, you sit on a rock. You run your fingers over the thin dark cracks in it, over the smooth grooves of it. You don't feel the cold anymore. The snow under your feet is hard, like no snow you'd ever stepped on before. 

13.

You look up and the sky is bright and blue and empty.

14.

Under you, there's nothing but clouds.

15.

You stay.

16.

You stand from the rock, slowly, your bones feeling stiff. You know you can't stay, know this isn't for you, you suddenly feel foreign in this nature, like an uninvited guest, barging in without question.  
Oh, but you don't want to go.

17.

You hold your own heart in your hands and wish-

* * *

_The blackberries taste sour and sweet_   
_like a split lip_   
_like a quick kiss_   
_mouth full, hands full, heart full of blackberries._


End file.
